Peace.

  She felt– at peace.

  That was her first hint that something was wrong.

  She hadn’t felt this sort of all-encompassing calm in years. Near on a decade, actually. Not since he had changed.

  From an exuberant child, to a brooding teenager, into a cruel young man. Like a malignant nightshade, revealing its poisonous petals as it bloomed.

  She tried to muster up some of that familiar indignation, that familiar desperation. Anything to pierce the unbecoming haze of vague peace she felt clouding her perception.

  And yet, in spite of her best efforts, the most she could conjure was a sort of vague concern.

  Other sensations came to her gradually, some part of her noted distantly. None of them were very helpful.

  Sight gave her only blurry shapes and vague outlines, as if her eyes were covered in fogged goggles. Smell was overwhelmed by a formaldic, chemical scent. Like a hospital.

  Or a morgue.

  Her tongue tasted only cotton-dry, and her sense of touch was completely cut off, leaving her feeling as if she were floating.

  Even her hearing, usually preternaturally excellent, could barely make anything out. For a long while, just the faint beeping of some manner of machine.

  And then, voices. Faint. Oh so very faint. On the absolute edges of her potential perceptions. They were murky, and indistinct, and it took every bit of her willpower to screw up enough focus to hear even snippets of the conversation.

  “-got your tool. How long until you can get–” The first voice was wheedling, and obnoxious. She felt an instinctive distaste to the speaker immediately, his tone reminding her of the sycophants that used to infest the old manor like Patrats, but with the same accent she’d grown used to since being brought to this strange region.

  The second voice was of a very different timbre. Calm, controlled, and dripping with the threat of barely restrained violence. “Be calm. My art takes time. You want things done correctly the first time, yes?” Unlike the first speaker, the second was quite clear, in spite of his unfamiliar accent. The low tones he spoke with carried clearly through the air, and they held an almost physical force.

  “Well, yes, but–” the sycophant tried to protest, before being cut off.

  “Then you will be patient,” the gravelly interruption shut the sniveling man up. How the sycophant could stand to protest his obvious better, she didn’t know. He should have been fearful for his life, considering the edge with which his counterpart spoke.

  “She is perfect for our needs,” the second voice continued, “and you will not rush me in my efforts to mold her into the proper shape.”

  An instinctual shudder ran through her. She could sense his intent. They were talking about her. That realization pierced some of the haze covering her mind, and the first real dregs of panic began flooding her system.

  Distantly, she heard a new sound, some sort of alarm beginning to play.

  “-Waking up,” the sycophant protested. “You said she’d be out for a full day.”

  “She is strong. Good. It will make things more interesting.” Something loomed over her, an ominous shape that her bleary eyes couldn’t quite perceive. The hot panic in her fled as something cold began spreading through her veins, doggedly forcing her conscious thoughts away.

  “I don’t need interesting, I need results, Scythe. The old man is breathing down my neck.”

  The sniveling man’s words began to fade away, as the cold sensation spread through her entire body, robbing her of her sight, then her taste, her touch. The antiseptic scent faded, and the last thing she heard, before she slipped into unconsciousness, was the looking figure’s oddly accented words.

  “And you will have them. A few months working on this beauty, and you’ll have your precious heir back. No matter who tries to stop us.”

  -

  “Our opportunity approaches. The Madaka’s have acquired some foreign– assistance. The sort that might make our dear friends at the league rethink our lack of extradition treaties,” Purson played idly with his pen as he explained the upcoming chance that their rivals had so foolishly provided. “If we can catch them in the act, we can clear one of the bigger players off the board.”

  The members of the board nodded. Those paying attention anyway.

  Really, you’d think that these decrepit, rotting fossils would be just a little bit interested in what he had to say.

  Unfortunately, in the end, the board only had one interest: how to make as much Poké Gold as possible. Anything more than one step removed from that process couldn’t hold their collective attention for more than a few minutes.

  Just as well. It meant that as long as he kept the numbers high, they’d give him carte blanche to pursue his more ambitious projects. Even if it made these update meetings an absolute slog.

  “So what are we doing with this knowledge?” Pick’s smoke-addled tones came out from the speakers installed in Purson’s desk. “We don’t have enough sway with City Security yet to force the sort of investigation that will drag this sort of dirt to light.”

  At least the board’s attack Mastobiff could still pay enough attention to what was going on. He was even generous enough to lob a soft-ball right into Purson’s mitt. “Ah, but this is our in with City Security, my dear Pick,” Purson couldn’t keep the grin off his face, and didn’t try. Better to let them see how excited he was. “When they see what our new technology can do, they’ll be scrambling to gain our favor, as will every private security organization in the region.”

  “It’s ready then?” Pick asked. The stubborn old man already knew the answer, they’d been over this in their last quarterly, but the rest of the board probably wasn’t as well-informed, on account of how little attention they paid to anything that wasn’t a graph with an upwards slope.

  “Oh absolutely,” Purson reassured the money-grubbers, “We’re entering final testing, and I suspect we’ll soon have ample opportunities to demonstrate its use. Soon, Remote AR will be the only thing anyone can talk about.”

  “And you have a candidate ready to show off the technology?” Pick inquired, eyes visibly narrowed.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “A few,” Purson grinned. “In fact, one of our main candidates just washed out of the circuit, and I think he’ll be eager to accept our offer. I’ve already sent a recruiter out to extend our offer.”

  -

  “Brent, someone’s at the door for you!” his Ma called from somewhere downstairs.

  Brent considered not answering. He could opt instead to just continue staring up at the ceiling, doing his best not to feel anything.

  Unfortunately, that course of action was just going to get his mom piping mad and up here after him, which would interfere with future efforts to stare at the ceiling and be numb.

  With a repressed sigh, the tall farmboy heaved himself free from his creaking bed, fumbling his way through the darkened room to the door.

  He stumbled over discarded clothes and scattered memorabilia, the remnants of a life surrendered not forty-eight hours yet.

  Technically, the season wasn’t over yet, but Mask and Brent were so far in the hole that they’d decided to throw in the towel.

  He could still hardly believe it. They’d been on top of the world, just a season ago, after beating Bria Mathers. Him and his partner were ready to take the Chroma League by storm!

  Except… they weren’t.

  They’d limped through the promotion tournament, barely scraping into the bottom rungs of the region’s best league, and there they’d languished.

  It wasn’t just the competition, which was far more experienced, and far more brutal than what they’d faced in the lower leagues.

  No, the real killer had been the expenses.

  Brent and Mask had never really managed to attract more than a couple of minor sponsors, and the losing streak that they’d went on in the dregs of the Chroma League hadn’t brought in any more, and in fact, had caused one of his existing orgs to drop him.

  After that, the travel costs, the medical expenses, the specialized resources, and the entry fees had quickly started adding up.

  Now, just three months into Ferrum’s most competitive League, Brent was taking a leave from matches.

  Or, more realistically, retiring from the League. He couldn’t officially depart until the end of the season early next year, but he also didn’t have the funds to compete anymore, effectively removing him from the competition.

  It wasn’t an uncommon story.

  Well, it was, but only because so few competitors ever actually made it into the Chroma League. Only five-hundred at any given time, with just sixty-four allowed to join the league each year.

  And of the sixty-four that left, well, most of them were like Brent.

  Forced out due to monetary or time constraints. Sure a few retired on their own terms, but they were a fraction compared to the ‘wash-outs.’

  ‘Wash-out.’ What an unfair phrase. The title they earned for making it to the very pinnacle of competitive Ferrum Battling.

  And now Brent and Mask had to figure out the rest of their lives with that cruel epithet.

  Gradually, painfully, Brent put on some semblance of an outfit, before stumbling through the creaking farmhouse to the front door.

  He wasn’t sure who he’d been expecting, maybe one of his friends from a nearby farmstead, or an overly excited kid from Tellur who’d heard that there was a Chroma League competitor on this farm.

  Whatever his guess, it wouldn’t have had any chance of aligning with reality. The sharp, pantsuit-wearing woman waiting by the front-door was so far out of left-field it was from a whole different ball game.

  “Mr. Wilson?” the woman asked, peering at him from behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.

  “Mor, Mor!” Her accompaniment chimed in, from their place on her shoulder. The oddly patterned rodent Pokémon clung to the woman’s hair with one hand, while waving with the other.

  Absently, Brent waved back. “Ya-, erm, I mean, yes. right. That’s me. Can I help you ma’am?” Brent stuttered a bit, trying to reign in his accent. It had come back in full-force within hours of getting home, as it always did, but he knew that it’d likely be unintelligible to his out-of-towner.

  Plus, who wanted to look like a country-rube in front of a pretty lady?

  “I believe we can help each other,” the woman replied with a closed-lipped smile. “You see, I have an offer for you Mr. Wilson, from my employers.”

  “An offer?” Brent blinked a couple of times, nonplussed, as he tried to keep himself from getting his hopes up. “Um, I don’t know if you’ve heard ma’am, but I’m currently on leave,” he said with an apologetic smile.

  “Ah, so had indeed heard that Mr. Wilson. Rather, we’re here to capitalize on your recent availability.” The woman informed him as she went to pull something out of her purse. “Tell me, Mr. Wilson, have you heard of The Frontline Corporation?”

  Brent blinked a couple of times, as the woman went increasingly deep into her seemingly endless bag. “Erm, yes? Who hasn’t? That’s a huge company. They make all sorts of AR gear and training equipment.” And a ton of other things besides, but they were most famous for their AR headsets.

  In Brent’s experience, Frontline was always lagging a few years behind the curve when it came to AR tech, and they’d yet to forward a more portable visor like some of the competition, but they were a good budget option for competitors, and he’d used one of their headsets, early on in his career.

  “Right, well, that’s me. Or, us, sorry,” she responded with a chuckle as she came back up from her explorations, now wielding a piece of paper held out in front of her. “Like I said earlier, we’ve got an exciting opportunity for you. We just need you to sign this NDA before we go any further.”

  Brent felt his eyebrows climb up towards his scalp. Breaking out an NDA already? Was she serious? Or just trying to pique his interest? If the latter was her goal, then he had to hand it to the city-slicker, it was definitely working.

  Brent scanned the document, but nothing about it stood out to him as odd or insidious. Not that he’d read a lot of NDAs, but he’d been hobnobbing around Neos enough to know that they were part and parcel when dealing with most tech companies.

  “Um, sure. That shouldn’t be a problem. Let me just grab a pen,” he told the woman after he finished scanning the page.

  “Excellent!” The woman exclaimed, unexpectedly exuberant. Her partner echoed her cheer, letting off little sparks of excitement from their place on her shoulder. “Would you mind ever so much if I came in for this discussion? You have a lovely porch, but this conversation could take a while.”

  “Ah geez, sorry ma’am, where are my manners? Please come in!” Brent ducked his head, and gestured for her to come inside.

  “Oh, I’ve forgotten mine as well, I’m Iana Janz. A pleasure to meet you Mr. Wilson.”

  “Please, call me Brent.”

  -

  After Iana had returned to the city, departing from their farmstead in a little electric car, Brent sat at the dining room table, mulling over her offer. Next to him, Mask sat stoically, similarly in thought.

  “It’s a good opportunity.” Brent finally broke the silence, musing out loud. “It could be a bit dangerous, but the money is great, and the insurance plan is amazing.” Brent had never been on private insurance, had never felt the need, the public stuff covered most of what you wanted, but being the beta-tester for cutting edge AR technology necessitated better protections than the city government offered.

  Mask was silent for a few moments, before replying, “Kix, Lok.”

  Brent winced. “I know, I know Mask, but think about things long-term! If this stuff works how they’re saying it does, it’s going to change everything. This could be our in! Our chance to get a job with City Security, or a private organization, after we're done at Frontline.”

  “Kix,” Mask glowered, clearly uncertain.

  “Look, if things go bad, we can back out, no questions asked. All we need to do is adhere to the NDA. Otherwise, we’re free to go. What’s the worst that could happen with giving them a chance?”

  Mask mulled his words over, before giving a slight nod.

  “Thanks Mask. Tell you what, anything seems off to you, let me know, and we’re out of there. Sounds good?”

  That got a more enthusiastic affirmation, and it was settled. Tomorrow, Brent would give Iana a call and tell her they were in.

  The young man would be lying to himself if he said that he wasn’t excited. After all, it wasn’t often that a farm boy from the boonies got to be one of the very first testers on a brand new technology. Especially one so revolutionary.

  But if the Remote AR tech worked like Frontline was promising, it was going to change, well, everything.